RCP: Trump Outpacing Both Obama and Bush at the Same Point in…

President Donald Trump continues to hold a stronger average national approval rating than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush did at this exact same point in their respective second terms, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages. It is a data point that deserves far more attention than it has received from a legacy media apparatus that spent much of the past year predicting a Trump collapse.

As of this week, the RealClearPolitics average places Trump’s approval at 41.0 percent. For comparison, at the equivalent point in his second term, Barack Obama sat at 40.9 percent in the summer of 2014. George W. Bush, meanwhile, trailed both men, registering just 38.5 percent at the same point in the summer of 2006. In other words, Trump is currently running ahead of two of the past three two-term presidents at this identical stage of their presidencies, according to an average that pulls together dozens of individual national surveys.

This is not a cherry-picked snapshot from a single friendly pollster. The RealClearPolitics average is built by aggregating results from a wide range of national polling outfits, including many that skew toward more critical treatment of Republican presidents.

That an average built from that broad universe of polls still shows Trump ahead of Obama and Bush at this stage speaks to just how durable his base of support has remained, even amid a punishing news cycle dominated by inflation concerns, tariff disputes, and continued unrest tied to the Iran conflict.

This is not the first time this comparison has made news. Back in mid-December, RealClearPolling’s own rolling average showed Trump at 43.5 percent, essentially tied with Bush’s 43.5 percent from the same date in his second term, and both men running ahead of Obama’s 42.7 percent.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier highlighted similar findings on air in January, noting that Trump’s 42.5 percent nearly matched Obama’s identical 42.5 percent, with Bush slightly ahead at 43.6 percent. By early January, Trump had pulled ahead of both, with RealClearPolling showing him at 43.9 percent compared to Bush’s 43.6 percent and Obama’s 42.4 percent on the same calendar date in their respective terms.

Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany highlighted the trend on Fox News in December, pointing out that according to RealClearPolitics’ own numbers, Trump stood as the most popular president at this point in his presidency among any of the last several administrations dating back to the start of the twenty-first century.

That claim, delivered on air using RCP’s own published averages, holds up under scrutiny given the consistency of the trend line over the past several months.

The comparison becomes even more favorable for Trump when narrowed to approval within his own political party. CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten, hardly a source with any incentive to flatter Trump, noted in a March analysis that Trump’s approval among Republicans, sitting at 86 percent, exceeded both Bush’s 77 percent approval among Republicans and Obama’s 77 percent approval among Democrats at the same point in their second terms. Enten went further, noting that Trump holds a majority of Republicans who “strongly approve” of his performance, at 53 percent, compared to 48 percent for Obama among Democrats and 47 percent for Bush among Republicans during the equivalent stretch of their presidencies. Enten summarized the trend succinctly, noting that Trump has the highest own-party approval of any president this century at this point in a second term.

That kind of party unity matters enormously heading into the 2026 midterms. Enten noted that Trump’s endorsements have functioned as a kind of political currency in Republican primaries this cycle, with the vast majority of candidates he has backed going on to win their races, even against sitting incumbents. A president who commands that level of loyalty from his own base retains significant sway over the direction of his party regardless of where his topline national number sits on any given week.

It is worth being honest about the fuller picture here, because a fair accounting of the data shows this comparison has not been static. Trump’s approval numbers, like those of every modern president, have fluctuated throughout the year. They dipped during stretches marked by tariff-driven inflation concerns and a lengthy government shutdown fight, falling into the high thirties at certain points this spring before recovering. That kind of volatility is normal for any second-term president navigating a difficult economic environment, and it does not change the underlying reality reflected in the latest RCP comparison: as of this week, Trump’s average sits above where both Obama and Bush stood on the same date in their own second terms.

Some polling averages that use different methodologies or weighting systems have shown Trump trailing further behind, particularly surveys conducted by outlets that have historically skewed toward oversampling Democrat-leaning respondents. That is precisely why the RealClearPolitics average exists in the first place, to smooth out the house effects of any single pollster and provide a composite picture built from dozens of independent surveys across the ideological spectrum. When measured against that composite, Trump’s standing at this stage looks considerably stronger than the doom-and-gloom coverage in much of the legacy press would suggest.

It also bears remembering just how difficult the political terrain has been for Trump during this stretch of his second term. He has presided over major military operations, including the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and coordinated strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure alongside Israel in operations dubbed Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury. He has pushed through sweeping tax legislation, including the elimination of taxes on tips and overtime pay, while simultaneously managing a contentious tariff regime that has drawn criticism even from some within his own coalition over its effect on consumer prices. Navigating that combination of foreign policy risk and domestic economic turbulence while still outperforming two popular predecessors at the same career stage is no small feat.

Compare that to how Bush and Obama fared during their own second-term stretches. Bush’s approval collapsed dramatically as his second term wore on, driven by mounting frustration over the Iraq War and a housing crisis that would soon spiral into the 2008 financial collapse. He would eventually see his numbers sink into the high teens by early 2008, a staggering fall from the 90 percent approval he commanded in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Obama, for his part, never fully recovered from the political drag caused by the rocky rollout of the Affordable Care Act and a 2013 government shutdown fight that soured many Americans on Washington dysfunction generally.

Trump’s team has pointed to a strengthening economic picture as one driver behind his more resilient numbers. Consumer confidence jumped notably earlier this year following a trade truce with China, and job growth continued even as public-sector employment contracted. Gas prices have fallen below three dollars a gallon in dozens of states, and the White House has touted rising purchasing power for average workers compared to the losses experienced during the Biden years. Whether those trends hold through the fall will likely determine whether Trump’s current advantage over his second-term predecessors persists into the midterm season itself.

None of this guarantees Republicans a smooth midterm cycle. Historical patterns are stubborn, and the party controlling the White House has lost House seats in nearly every midterm election since 2002, regardless of the sitting president’s approval rating. Even Obama, who posted a stronger approval rating heading into the 2010 midterms than Trump currently holds, still watched Democrats lose 63 House seats that November in one of the worst midterm routs for either party in modern history. A modestly higher approval rating compared to two predecessors does not, by itself, immunize a party from the typical midterm headwinds facing the incumbent president’s party.

Still, the RCP numbers matter because they cut directly against the dominant media narrative of the past several months, which has largely framed Trump’s second term as a story of collapsing public support. The data tells a more complicated story, one in which Trump, despite waging an active shadow war with Iran, pushing through controversial tariff policy, and battling a hostile press corps at every turn, has managed to maintain a base of support that, on a pure apples-to-apples comparison, outperforms both Obama and Bush at this identical point in their presidencies.

For a White House eager to reassure nervous Republican candidates ahead of a difficult midterm map, that comparison offers a genuine talking point rooted in actual data rather than spin. It suggests that whatever erosion Trump has experienced over the past year, it has not been more severe than what two of the last three two-term presidents experienced at the same career stage, and in some respects it has been considerably less severe.

The coming months will test whether this trend holds. Inflation data, developments in the Iran conflict, and the trajectory of ongoing trade negotiations will all shape where Trump’s approval numbers land as Election Day 2026 approaches. But as of today, the record according to RealClearPolitics is unambiguous: at this point in his second term, Donald Trump remains more popular, by the numbers, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush were at the same moment in their own presidencies.